Virtual ESXi / Nested Virtualization and EVC

[Nitzan_S]

Hi all,

We've tried to install some new virtual ESXi servers in our dev. environment in order to help our R&D.

The problem is that our clusters have to be EVC enabled - Merom Gen. in order for the R&D stuff to work.

I've tried using the following two articles:

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-support-for-nested-64bit.html

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2012/02/how-to-configure-nested-esxi-5-to.html

After I finish the first link, the virtual ESXi is able to run 64-bit VMs. So everything's fine there (Although I did ran into problems with this as well - Apparently you can't have the physical host hosting the virtual ESX running in an EVC in the first place).

So after the virtual ESXi is able to run 64-bit VMs, I'm continuing to the 2nd link and it doesn't work. I'm doing exactly what the guy says there and yet the virtual ESXi is not compatible to the EVC cluster and the 64-bit VM hosted on the virtual ESXi cannot run after the CPUID Mask changes.

Has anyone experienced something similiar? Anyone has any ideas what am I doing wrong or can provide me with some leads on what to do?

Thanks ahead,

Nitzan.

[a_p_]

Discussion moved from VMware ESXi 5 to Nested Virtualization

[admin]

Can you post a vmware.log file for one of the ESXi VMs?

[Nitzan_S]

I added both the vmware.log of the virtual ESXi (vesx_vmware.log) and of the 64 bit vm hosted on it (64bitvm-vmware.log).

[admin · Accepted solution]

I believe the following option:

cpuid.1.ecx = 00000000000000001010001000011001

should be

cpuid.1.ecx = 00000000000000001010001000111001

[Nitzan_S]

You're right. The new option fixed it.

Where did you see that this was the missing option? In the VC Errors it didn't say that this option was the wrong one.

Thanks a lot!

[admin]

I looked at the source code to see what the requirements for a Merom cluster were.